Employment and HR resources
Published on: 26th August 2025 | Updated on: 22nd December 2025
This section supports LPCs on a range of employment law matters. It is intended mainly for LPC Chairs, Vice-Chairs, Treasurers and Chief Officers and contains confidential legal advice notes and template documents. The advice and documents have been drafted specifically to cater for LPCs by Clyde & Co LLP, who are specialists in providing employment law advice, and funded by Community Pharmacy England for all LPCs in England to use freely and adopt.
As well as having business as usual templates including a staff handbook with all policies and employment procedures, contract of employment, consultancy agreements and a settlement agreement, it covers specific advice for LPC members in relation to managing the risk around liability of individuals on the committee due to unincorporated association status.
Whilst materials have been specifically drafted for LPCs, they are inevitably generic in nature. Where specific issues arise, specialist legal advice is required and generic documents of this nature may need to be amended and/or a different approach taken depending on the specific circumstances. Further advice can be obtained from Clyde and Co LLP.
The section of the LPC area should not be routinely accessed by LPC staff, without permission of their employer first.
LPC and employment matters
If your LPC has employees or engages workers through consultancy, your Committee is deemed to be responsible for discharging all the duties of an employer. Due to the legal status of an LPC being an unincorporated association the organisation doesn’t offer ‘limited liability’ to those governing the organisation in the same way that a company does, meaning claims could be brought against committee members
It is therefore important that LPCs have effective controls, governance, and ensure proper procedures are followed, especially in the areas of employment law and finance. These were two of the areas also highlighted in the Wright Review evidence base as needing improvement and the Review Steering Group (RSG) proposed solutions to help, including actions that start to standardized good practice around HR and finance.
There are certain matters that you cannot delegate and must remain with the full committee, typically approval and adoption of key employment policies, terms and conditions and policies around equality and diversity and approach to remuneration and reward.
Key questions/consideration for LPC committee members:
- Are committee members aware of the core support provided to all LPCs and when were your polices, and terms last reviewed? Are you using the LPC network standard documents, if not why?
- Does the committee have access to HR advice and guidance, can you access it if the need arises?
- Discuss with the whole committee your responsibility as an employer and agree principles for HR advice and support –and link to budget setting process. Subscription model for advice beyond the core templates.
Click on a heading below for more information
This section includes bespoke advice notes on the potential liability of individuals on the committee on employment matters due to unincorporated association status (this should be shared with all existing and new members of the LPC committee), advice on employment status and guidance to help LPCs undertake an annual salary review.
- Guidance note – Employment Rights Bill and Amendment (April 2025)
- Guidance on employment status
- LPC finance briefing (February 2025)
- LPCs pay review guidance note final
- Risks of personal liability
To support the LPCs undertake the salary review process is conducted diligently, Community Pharmacy England has helped to gather intelligence available from the established network of Chairs and Treasurers to consider the approach of other LPCs, as well as wider market conditions. LPCs Treasurers and Chairs have access to the outputs of the LPC Finance and HR Survey information and it can be requested from the LPC Support Team email: lpc.support@cpe.org.uk
In addition, from the Wright Review, carried out in 2020 said:
Referenced to range of staffing and some analysis of spending by LPC, including on staff costs. The review also touched on the role that benchmarking with this type of data might play in future.
The review also said “the breadth of expertise and responsibility of the CO role however is such that the salary would be anticipated to be a senior management level.
Pro-rata salaries of up to and beyond £100k were cited on a number of occasions with questions raised as to whether this really provided value for money for pharmacy owners (inflation needs to be considered, amongst other things, since the review was conducted in 2020).
Business as usual templates including a staff handbook with all policies and employment procedures, contract of employment, consultancy agreements and a settlement Agreement.
Guidance to LPCs on managing possible conflicts of interest
This guidance has been prepared to help LPCs identify and manage situations where there could be a perceived or actual conflict of interest affecting a member or employee of an LPC. It is intended to supplement the Code of Conduct and Nolan principles.
The section is split into advice note and a full suite of template documents to help support the grievance process and builds on the staff handbook.
Advice
Template documents
This section is split into advice note and a full suite of template documents to help support the disciplinary process and builds on the staff handbook.
Advice
- Disciplinary guidance checklist for managing misconduct
- Guidance on conducting investigations and disciplinary procedure
Template documents
- Script for meeting advising employee of disciplinary investigation
- Letter advising employee of disciplinary investigation
- Disciplinary invite letter
- Script for disciplinary hearing
- Disciplinary outcome letter (termination summary termination
- Disciplinary outcome letter (written warning (first final))
- Invitation to grievance appeal meeting
- Script for grievance appeal meeting
- Appeal outcome letter
A Bespoke advice note to LPCs on ‘Rights and Risks relating to restructuring and redundancies in LPCs’ including advice relating to an overview of the requirements and process of a fair and non-discriminatory individual redundancy consultation (including common pitfalls and timescales) including how employees can be supported proactively and employment status (and associated rights for each) – who should be included in any redundancy process? This also includes resources on TUPE relating to LPC changes.
TUPE and restructure
Advice
Template documents
- Internal announcement by transferor to affected employees
- Q&A following internal announcement
- First letter to employees (where consultation not envisaged)
- First letter to employees (where consultation process to take)
- Q&A for affected employees
- Script for first [consultation] meeting
- Invite to second [consultation] meeting
- Letter to employees confirming transfer
- Opt out form
- Letter from transferor to transferee notification of employee
- Letter from transferee to affected employees confirming whether or not measures are envisaged
- Measures schedule (optional)
Redundancy process
Advice
- A quick guide to collective redundancies
- Guidance on a redundancy process
- Redundancy process flowchart
Template documents
- Letter notifying employee of redundancy situation; provisional selection and inviting to initial consultation meeting
- Unique roles only letter notifying employee of redundancy
- Selection criteria guidance
- Redundancy selection criteria matrix
- Details of current vacancies alternative employment
- Guidance for first consultation meeting
- Letter confirming discussions at first consultation meeting and inviting employee to second consultation meeting
- Guidance for second consultation meeting
- Letter invitation to outcome meeting
- Guidance for outcome meeting
- Redundancy dismissal letter
- Measures schedule (optional)
- Guidance for appeal meeting
- Appeal outcome letter upholding revoking dismissal
This section contains a guidance note on the duty to prevent sexual harassment, together with a list of factors for LPCs to consider when producing a risk assessment, a template risk assessment table (with worked example), a table of measures to consider taking to mitigate risks and a climate survey (which some larger LPCs might want to use).
Taken together, these documents should enable LPCs to consider their specific risk factors and take steps to reduce the risk of claims arising in the first place or, if they do arise, to mitigate the risk they are held to be in breach of the new duty.
It will require LPC to consider the specifics of their working environment; working through the guidance note and supporting documents, will allow the production of an appropriate risk assessment and begin to take the necessary steps to address any risks identified.
This section includes an advice note on the Employment Rights Bill as a heads-up about the changes ahead for all employers. To support LPCs further on this, during 2025/26 financial year with the support of our legal advisors, we will be reviewing and updating the template contracts, policies, procedures and the staff handbook that are provided to all LPCs. Should any LPC require any specific or further guidance or support in respect of navigating the changes being introduced by the Bill, this can be obtained from Clyde & Co LLP in the usual way.
This section is home to historical briefing and training materials for reference only. The latest versions of policies and procedures and key documents should always be referred to.
This section contains policies and risk assessment templates to support LPCs as employers managing health and safety. Most LPCs are small and low-risk environments, however it is still important to manage risks and take practical steps to protect workers and others from harm. Managing risk is just one part of health and safety management. You must also have arrangements in place to:
- make the right plans
- implement those plans
- check they are working
- act if they are not
Further information and what is required by law is available from the Health and Safety Executive
These bespoke templates, developed by Rhino Safety Limited, a specialist safety consultancy, and based on input from some LPCs, serve as a starting point for your organisation. Feel free to customise them to suit your operations, we have divided them to help distinguish between those LPCs with physical premises or exclusively home/remote based. Pay special attention to the text in red.
- Health and Safety Policy (without premises)
- General Risk Assessment
- Health and Safety policy (with premises)
- General Office Risk Assessment
For any questions or support needed to complete this, Rhino Safety offers individual assistance at a discounted rate for all LPCs. Email simon@rhinosafety.co.uk for further details.
For more information on this topic please email lpc.support@cpe.org.uk
